Description
Although venerated throughout the Christian West, St Roch has nevertheless remained a mysterious personage. Beginning in the second half of the fifteenth century the cult of the holy pilgrim, protector against the plague, spread from Lombardy to Venice and from Venice German merchants took it to Nuremberg and southern Germany , from where it swiftly spread to the rest of Europe . But who was in fact St Roch and what were the causes which led to his cult becoming so deeply rooted with such speed so that traces of it can be seen everywhere including representations of him in works of art?
